Circuit boards are often provided with plated through holes for facilitating electrical connection to conductive traces on the board. Typically so-called pin contacts are provided for making such connections. A prior art pin contact 1 is shown in FIG. 1. The pin contact 1 includes a feed-through portion 2 for insertion into a plated through hole 10 (see FIG. 5) in a circuit board 12 and a deformable portion 4 (an enlarged view of which is shown in FIG. 2) at an end of the feed-through portion 2. The deformable portion 4 is adapted to be forced into a plated section 14 of a plated through hole 10 which is electrically connected to a layer 16 in the board 12. As this occurs the deformable portion 4 is deformed and makes the required electrical connection between the pin contact 1 and the plated section 14. A plurality of pin contacts are usually mounted in a connector with their feed through portions 2 projecting therefrom. The feed-through portions 2 of the connector are threaded into a plurality of plated through holes 10 in the board as the connector is moved towards the board the deformable portions 4 of the connectors are deformed as described above. Customarily a shroud or other device with a plurality of closely spaced plated through holes for receipt of the feed-through portions is threaded over the feed-through portions 2. As each deformable portion 4 of a connector is pressed into each plated section 14 it is squeezed. As this squeezing occurs however the feed-through portion 2 of each contact 1 tends to become misaligned with the deformable portion 4 thereof. This occurs because the deformable portion may not be symmetrically formed with respect to a central longitudinal plane thereof, for example in the case of a so-called eye of a needle pin contact, of the type shown in FIG. 1, an aperture 18 in the deformable portion 4 may not be exactly centrally located with respect to a width of the contact and the thickness of sections 20 on either side of the deformable portion 4 may not be equal. Such asymmetry causes the feed-through portion 2 to become bent away from a central longitudinal axis 22 of the contact 1 so that its tip 24 becomes displaced by a distance d shown in FIG. 3 from the axis 22. FIGS. 3 and 4 show the shape of the contact 1 after it has been partially inserted into plated through hole 10. The board 12 is shown schematically in dashed lines in FIGS. 3 and 4. Such displacement of the tips 24 of typical prior art contacts which have been pressed into plated through holes of various different diameters (a-0.65 mm, b-0.70 mm, c-0.75 mm, d-0.80 mm) is demonstrated in FIG. 7. It can be seen that when the contacts are pressed into relatively small holes their tips 24 tend to be displaced to a greater extent. Due to manufacturing tolerances for printed circuit boards a certain range of hole diameters should work. The disadvantage of pressing the contacts into relatively larger diameter holes, as shown in FIG. 7d, is that the electrical connection between the contacts and the plated sections 14 is less effective. There is usually a requirement to mount a shroud or other device with a plurality of closely spaced holes over the feed-through portions of the contacts which often proves difficult or even impossible as a consequence of the displacement of the tips 24.
The misalignment could also be in a direction perpendicular to the one shown in FIG. 3 which results is the same problem when a shroud is to be mounted over the pin. For other types of press fit zones or deformable portions the feed-through portion may rotate. If the rotation is high, electrical connection to the feed-through portion can not be guaranteed.